The First Infantry Division on D-Day

Louis Newman had the best seat in the house at the biggest, loudest, most important amphibious assault landing in history. It was a seat he would just as soon not have had.

The twenty-seven-year-old private first class from Brooklyn, New York, a member of Cannon Company, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division (known as the "Big Red One" from its distinctive shoulder patch designed in World War I), was perched atop the cab of a three-quarter-ton truck that was stalled in chest-deep water about a hundred yards from a beach in France dubbed "Omaha."

Whichever way he swiveled his head, the entire
chaotic, horrific panorama of the Normandy Invasion encircled him like the
battle cyclorama paintings at Gettysburg and Waterloo. To his front was a
prickly landscape of beach obstacles of all descriptions; frightened men wading
ashore from landing craft; boats and vehicles wrecked and burning; geysers of
water being blasted into the air; and a shoreline erupting with an unending
series of violent bursts.

Behind and beside him, warships of all description
were firing shells of every caliber over and around him — all accompanied by a
stereophonic soundtrack cranked up to eardrum-shattering volume. Above him — most
of them unseen above the low, steel-gray clouds — hundreds of warplanes were
crisscrossing the leaden sky. Adding to the horror of the scene, bobbing in the
water all around his olive-drab, steel island, were the corpses of his fellow
invaders, leaking blood. As dangerous as his exposed position was, Private
First Class Newman had another problem: He couldn't swim. He had lost his
inflatable life belt. His rifle and helmet were also missing. And the tide was
rapidly rising. 1

While Louis Newman sat pondering his future atop
his dangerous perch, a few miles behind him, on board a gray-painted Navy
cruiser, General Omar Nelson Bradley fretted like a nervous, expectant father,
totally out of touch with the battle he was supposed to orchestrate.

Somewhere in France, a German field marshal by the
name of Erwin Rommel was racing back to his palatial command post at La
Roche-Guyon, on the Seine between Paris and Rouen, hoping that he was not too
late to reverse the tide of a battle that had already spun out of control
during his brief, untimely absence.

In a villa in Southampton, England, a bald,
grim-faced, American four-star general named Dwight David Eisenhower stood
chain-smoking, jingling the English coins in his pocket, and staring at huge
situation maps that maddeningly refused to tell him if this invasion, for which
he alone took full responsibility, was about to become a stunning success or a
crashing, tragic failure.

Across the ocean in America — from where had come so
many of the young men who were at that moment engaged in a life-and-death
struggle — the war-weary nation was asleep, unaware of the drama unfolding along
the northern coast of France. No less than the ultimate outcome of the war in
Europe hung precariously in the balance.

Exactly how Louis Newman and 175,000 other
American, British, Canadian, and Free French soldiers who were, at that very
moment, fighting their way onto the northern coast of Nazi-occupied France
found themselves in this situation is a complex story that began several years
earlier.

The necessity of invading the European continent as
the only way to defeat Nazi Germany was recognized early on by the British.
After France fell to the Germans in June 1940, and the British Expeditionary
Force sent to provide assistance to the French was sent reeling into the sea at
Dunkerque, German dictator Adolf Hitler expected the British to sue for peace;
he was not prepared for British defiance. After attempting to mount his own
amphibious invasion of Britain, Hitler called it off due to the lack of a
proper invasion fleet and the fact that his air force, the Luftwaffe, had not gained air superiority over the English Channel
during the nine months of the Blitz in 1939–1940. Frustrated, Hitler turned his
wrath on the Soviet Union, which he had earlier lulled into inaction with a
non-aggression pact. 2

Although the United States was not yet in the war,
American ideas on how to defeat Hitler had begun to take shape during the
spring and summer of 1941. With much of Europe under Nazi domination, and
Britain and Russia struggling to survive the German onslaught, it seemed
obvious to the realists in Washington, D.C., that the United States would not
be able to remain neutral much longer. To prepare for the war he saw coming,
General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army's Chief of Staff, asked the War
Department to create an assessment on how to defeat the Axis powers. This
study, which later became known as the Victory Plan, dovetailed with British
ideas and showed clearly that the only way to win the war would be to
physically invade the European continent and march into the heart of Hitler's
Third Reich.

Before this could happen, however, two main
conditions needed to be met: Enough men would need to be trained and equipped
for the task, and sufficient shipping would need to be available to transport
the men and their supplies to Britain, from which the invasion would be
launched and supplied. According to the Victory Plan, the success of such an
invasion hinged on eliminating the German U-boat threat in the North Atlantic;
achieving air superiority over enemy-controlled Europe; destroying or
disrupting the German economy and war industries; degrading the German military
machine on other fronts; and establishing harbors and military bases in
Britain. 3

It was an almost impossibly tall order, especially
given the fact that the United States in the summer of 1941 was still a
third-rate military power with a small army and obsolete equipment. The
grandiose plans of landing in Europe and marching into Berlin would have to
wait. The British, on the other hand, now that Germany had called off the
invasion in order to attack Russia, began planning an invasion of their own. In
September 1941, the British Chiefs of Staff charged Admiral Lord Louis
Mountbatten and his Combined Operations Headquarters with studying the
feasibility of conducting amphibious operations against German-held Europe.
Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill told Mountbatten, "You are to prepare for
the invasion of Europe. You must devise and design the appliances, the landing
craft, and the technique . . . . The whole of the South Coast of England is a
bastion of defense against the invasion of Hitler; you've got to turn it into
the springboard for our attack." 4

Although the responsibility for the invasion soon
passed out of Mountbatten's hands, the invasion of Europe became, as one
historian observed, "the supreme effort of the Western Allies in Europe — the
consummation of the grand design to defeat Germany by striking directly at the
heart of Hitler's Reich. One of the last attacks, [Operation Overlord] was the fruition of some of
the first strategic ideas." 5

The shock waves from the Japanese bombs that fell
on the U.S. military installations in the Hawaiian Islands on 7 December 1941
rudely shook Americans out of their blissful isolationist dreams. With
America's military preparedness in a sadly neglected state, the industrial
giant began to rise slowly from the enforced idleness of the Great Depression,
stoked the cold furnaces of its factories, and began churning out an endless,
ever-quickening procession of tanks, trucks, warplanes, ships, rifles, cannon,
bombs, bullets, and all the other necessities of war. Whitewashed barracks and
canvas camps sprang up practically overnight across the United States to
welcome the students, salesmen, farm boys, truck drivers, cooks, clerks, and
laid-off workers who were now fledgling soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast
Guardsmen, and Marines, eager to fight for their aggrieved country. There was
a war to be won, and almost no American boy or man wanted to be left out of it.

While it was the Japanese who had attacked America,
President Franklin Del­ano Roosevelt had always regarded Nazi Germany as the
greater threat; if Britain and Russia fell, the United States would be left to
face Germany and Italy alone. It was therefore determined, even before Pearl
Harbor, that once the U.S. was at war, the bulk of American military resources
would be concentrated against Nazi Germany; Japan, it was felt, could be
contained in the Pacific until the European enemies were defeated. 6

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Churchill met with
the American Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., at what became known as
the Arcadia Conference. There he outlined his strategic concept for the defeat
of Germany, which included a naval blockade of Axis nations; the bombardment of
German cities, industrial sites, and transportation networks; amphibious
attacks against German installations and interests from Norway to the Aegean
and Mediterranean Seas; and a final assault on Nazi Germany itself. 7

As the American war machine gathered steam, U.S.
and British planners, with the continual prodding of the besieged Soviet Union,
began working together to formulate the invasion of Europe. Churchill, already
facing manpower and ma­tériel shortages, and waiting for a United States that
had not fully mobilized, was understandably reluctant to invade the Continent
alone. The 1940 debacle at Dunkerque was still fresh in his mind. Even fresher
were Britain's brave but ultimately failed seaborne assaults in Norway, Crete,
and Greece. Trying once more to gain a foothold on the continent, Churchill
gave his blessing to a large-scale commando raid at the French port city of
Dieppe on 19 August 1942, an operation known as Jubilee. Taking part were 5,000 soldiers of the Canadian 2nd
Infantry Division, a thousand British troops, two dozen Free French commandos,
and about fifty American Rangers. The goal was not to wrest France away from the
Germans, or even to be a precursor to a much larger invasion, but simply to
gather intelligence about the state of German coastal defenses.

The British quickly learned an expensive lesson. Jubilee was anything but a call for
celebration; of the 6,100 Allied soldiers who reached the beach at Dieppe, over
half were either killed or captured, and the shaken survivors of the nine-hour
battle were withdrawn under fire. Dieppe taught British planners two things: a
considerably larger landing force was essential, as was a heavy and prolonged
air and naval bombardment of the hostile defenses. For Churchill, who, as first
lord of the admiralty in 1915 had presided over the disastrous seaborne landing
at Gallipoli in Turkey, Operation Jubilee was especially chilling. These two signal events — Gallipoli and Dieppe — were to
form the basis of his reluctance to send British troops into another amphibious
adventure. Churchill's desire, instead, was to nibble at the edges of the Third
Reich with his limited forces until the United States could bolster the British
effort. He thus proposed postponing any invasion until the periphery of the
Reich had been sufficiently reduced. His dynamic mind churning out plans and
proposals at a breakneck pace, Churchill saw major attacks against
German-controlled North Africa, Italy, the Balkans, and Norway as vital before
proceeding with any major invasion of France. 8

The United States, on the other hand, was not
terribly keen on the indirect operations Churchill was advocating. With its
growing industrial might, the United States was eager to take the fight to the
enemy. If we wait too long, U.S. military advisers argued, the Russians might
be defeated, and then the entire German war machine would be free to
concentrate on Britain and the United States. Bombing the Reich was fine, but
bombing alone would not win the war; it would take troops on the ground,
meeting and annihilating the enemy, and marching into Berlin, to achieve total
victory.

But where and when to start? Invading the European
continent was important as a long-term objective, but certain realities made it
impossible in 1942. Facing a two-front war, America was not yet capable of
taking on the lion's share of combat in the European/Mediterranean Theater.
Until sufficient quantities of men and matériel could be built up in Britain,
the two nations could only attempt to break Germany's will to fight and disrupt
her war production by round-the-clock strategic bombing of her cities and
factories.

The most pressing problem, however, was the fact
that German submarines and aircraft were sending to the ocean floor millions of
tons of vital, American-made war goods destined for beleaguered Britain and the
Soviet Union. Before the millions of men — plus their tanks and guns and planes
and trucks and bullets and bombs and gasoline and tires and spare parts and
rations and mountains of other supplies and equipment — could be concentrated in
Britain, the sea lanes would need to be secured. The navies of both Britain and
the United States swung into full action to rid the Atlantic of the U-boat
menace, a task that would take time. Until the wolf packs could be defanged and
Britain turned into a mighty launching pad for the invasion, some other place
needed to be found to engage the enemy.

Among the American divisions being prepared to take
the war to the enemy was the 1st Infantry Division, most of whose members
hailed from New York and New England. The Big Red One was considered by many to
be America's premier Army division, and with good reason. Elements of what
eventually would become the 1st Infantry Division could trace their heritage to
1798. The division's predecessors also fought in the War of 1812; the Mexican
War of 1846–1848; the Civil War; the wars against the Indians in the Southwest;
at San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War; in the Philippine
Insurrection; and during John J. Pershing's 1916 Punitive Expedition against
Pancho Villa along the U.S.-Mexico border.

World War I broke out in 1914 and the United States
entered it three years later. The days of regiments being the main combat
forces were numbered; the exigencies of the First World War required larger
units — divisions — made up of four regiments. Thus, before the American
Expeditionary Force was sent to fight in France, the Army was reorganized and
the 1st Expeditionary Division (soon renamed the 1st Infantry Division) was
formed. It consisted of the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Infantry Regiments (when
the Army reorganized again in 1940 and the number of regiments in a division
was trimmed to three, the 28th was transferred to the 8th Infantry Division).

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson
deployed twenty-nine infantry divisions to France. They fought with a courage
and tenacity that shocked the enemy, electrified the Allies, and proved to be
the deciding factor in the final victory. And at the head of the list of units
that distinguished themselves stood the 1st Infantry Division. It is said that
one of the division's artillery batteries fired the first shots of any American
unit when it reached the front lines in October 1917; 1st Infantry Division
soldiers also became the first American army casualties of the war. The Big Red
One was engaged in some of the hardest fighting during the last year of the
conflict — battles with names that seared themselves into the consciousness of
Americans for generations to come: Cantigny, St. Mihiel, Soissons, Argonne. 9

The word "infantry" comes from the French — infanterie — meaning a soldier trained and
equipped to fight on foot. No matter how technologically innovative warfare has
become, no one has yet invented a robot to replace the foot soldier, capable of
marching long distances in any type of terrain or weather while lugging all his
possessions in a pack on his back, and doing battle with the enemy by means of
his rifle, grenades, bayonet, knife, and even bare hands.

The key to an infantry division's success is the
quality of its personnel and their training. In pre–World War II America,
combat skills did not come naturally. While some of the recruits (and they were
either volunteers or men who had been drafted) may have previously handled
rifles in pursuit of pheasants or deer, the vast majority of city-dwelling
civilians had no familiarity with firearms. As most families in the 1930s and
1940s were church-goers to some extent, most young men grew up with the
commandment "Thou shalt not kill" impressed strongly into them. Thus, turning a
recent high-school graduate or young, ex–soda jerk into a trained, disciplined
soldier was not easy. It took time — thirteen weeks of basic training, then
advanced infantry training — in which the soldier could hone his craft during
realistic combat training scenarios and exercises. The young American soldier
learned to fire his M-1 Garand rifle with deadly accuracy; to lob grenades; to
attack with a bayonet; and to engage in hand-to-hand combat. He learned to dig
protective holes in which to take cover while under attack by artillery,
aircraft, or tanks. He learned to ignore heat, cold, wet, thirst, hunger, exhaustion,
and minor injuries. He learned the limits of his endurance — and was pushed
beyond them. He learned to perform not only his own job, but the jobs of those
around him, for he never knew when a machine-gunner or mortarman or radio
operator might be hit, requiring him to fill in for a downed comrade. He
learned how to be a part of a team.

The young soldier also learned to instinctively and
unquestioningly obey orders, no matter how dangerous they might be. Conversely,
despite the insistence on instant obedience to orders, he was encouraged to
think for himself when confronted by unusual situations, and to assume a
leadership role when his leaders were killed, wounded, or missing. He
learned — no, had drummed into his head — that the most important thing about being a soldier was to accomplish his assigned mission, regardless of the
difficulties, discomforts, or obstacles, even at the cost of his own life. 10

With all infantry divisions having the same
organization, the same training, and same broad mission, what set one division
apart from another was a com­bination of factors — mostly the quality of the
officers and NCOs, or non-­commissioned officers; the sergeants and corporals.
The officers of the 1st Infantry Division, most of whom had graduated from the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, considered themselves the best
of the breed. Many of the older officers — the colonels and lieutenant colonels
and majors — had been in the Army since World War I, and many had seen combat.
The same was true for many of the senior NCOs. Between them, they had a wealth
of combat experience and knowledge to pass along to the younger officers and
soldiers.

Perhaps just as importantly, they would impart
their deeply held convictions that the 1st Infantry Division was not just the
best damned division in the United States Army, but in any army in the world. Therefore, once the U.S. entered World War II, big things were expected from the Big Red One.

In early August 1942, with its stateside training complete, the entire 1st Infantry Division was crammed aboard the converted luxury oceanliner, the HMS Queen Mary, and shipped from New York to Scotland. To kill time, poker games
broke out all over the ship, and one soldier is reported to have won $28,000. 11
Others also made a killing, including members of the ship's crew, who,
according Sergeant George J. Koch, a member of the 1st Reconnaissance Troop,
"had a 'field day' and looted our barracks bags, which were in the hold, of
personal articles, especially candy, cigarettes, shaving cream, etc." 12

Upon arriving in Scotland, the division was sent by
rail to England, where it underwent almost three more months of advanced
training under its battle-hardened commanding general, Major General Terry
Allen * and his deputy, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (who had served
with the 1st during the First World War), the oldest son of the rough-riding
former American president. Few in the division knew where it would see its
first combat of this war; many assumed it would be France, or perhaps even the
Soviet Union. Their assumptions would turn out to be wrong.

In the autumn of 1942, the Russians were
tenaciously holding out at a city on the Volga River named Stalingrad. The
city's namesake needed all the help he could get — and quickly. With Stalin
demanding a "second front" to relieve German pressure on his nation, the United
States agreed to enter the European war through an unlikely door: pro-German,
Vichy-French-controlled Morocco and Algeria, from where the United States would
reinforce the British who had been battling the Germans and Italians in North
Africa since March 1941. 13 Operation Torch,
as the invasion of North Africa was code-named, would give Americans their
first real taste of battle outside of the Pacific. Under the overall command of
Lieutenant General Dwight David Eisenhower, 67,000 U.S. troops were poised to
begin wading ashore at three points along the Moroccan and Algerian coasts. 14

In the black morning hours of 8 November 1942, the
1st Infantry Division lay in darkened transports off the unsuspecting coast of
Algeria in the Gulf of Arzew, keyed up and ready for just this moment — its
baptism of fire — and its young members wondered if they could live up to the
reputation established by the "old-timers."

To say that the campaign was a confused mess would
be an understatement. The 1st Infantry Division, landing near Oran as part of
Major General Lloyd Fredendall's Central Task Force, did well in its initial
combat operations, quickly taking the Vichy-French-held cities of Oran, Arzew,
and St. Cloud. The fight for Oran was over almost before it began, and the
advancing 1st Infantry Division was warmly greeted by the citizens. Terry Allen
noted in a letter home, "Our passage through the city was most impressive. The
entire civilian population turned out en masse and were hysterically
enthusiastic at the sight of the American flag." 15

Within three days, Allied troops claimed 1,300
miles of coastline, and the British and Americans were soon preparing to push
into Tunisia and Libya. During this three-day period, the 1st Infantry Division
had been blooded — and bloodied: 94 killed, 251 wounded, and 73 missing. 16

After this initial success, Eisenhower inexplicably
allowed his subordinate, British Lieutenant General Sir Kenneth Anderson, to
split up the division and parcel out elements of it as reinforcements for
British units. Not unexpectedly, these elements did not perform well, and the
only reinforcement that was done was to reinforce British perceptions that the
American Army was untrained, undisciplined, and ineffective. On the other hand,
the British Eighth Army, under General Bernard Law Montgomery, was doing well.
German and Italian forces seemed to be crumbling. By 17 November, even the
French forces in North Africa, perhaps sensing which side was eventually going
to win the war, had broken with the Germans and turned into American allies. 17

Angry at his division's mounting casualties under
British leadership, however, Terry Allen went to see Eisenhower in Algiers to
request that his division be reunified under his command; Ike promised to look
into the matter, an answer that did not satisfy Allen. Upon leaving to return
to his headquarters in Oran, Allen ruffled the feathers of Ike's irasible chief
of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, with an offhand remark: "Is this a private war
in Tunisia or can anybody get in on it?" Smith was not amused, the division was
not reunited, and the remark would later cost Allen dearly. 18

With the North Africa campaign still under way, Churchill and Roosevelt met at Casablanca from 14 to 24 January 1943 to discuss broad strategy for the eventual invasion of the European continent. General Marshall's staff had already drawn up a plan (code-named Roundup) that called for the invasion of
France in the spring of 1943, while the bulk of the German army was tied down
on the Russian front and before the coastal defenses of France could be
strengthened.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and their staffs worked
tirelessly to hammer out an agreement that consisted of several major
objectives: stepping up efforts to eliminate the U-boat menace in the Atlantic;
increasing the bombing offensive against Germany; keeping German troops pinned
down in the Mediterranean area with additional operations; providing more
material aid to the Russians; engaging in "island-hopping" by the Americans
across the Pacific with an eventual invasion of the Japanese home islands;
increasing pressure on the Japanese in the China-Burma-India Theater; and
proceeding with plans to develop the top-secret atomic bomb. 19

A number of factors still conspired against a quick
invasion of France: a lack of shipping (especially LSTs — Landing Ship, Tank); a
lack of trained and/or combat-tested American units (the Roundup plan called for forty-three assault divisions); a lack of
necessary supplies; and a lack of sufficient air and naval support. It would
take more time to overcome these obstacles. Much to the disappointment of many,
especially Stalin, the invasion of France was postponed until 1944. 20

The Americans, meanwhile, stumbled through a
series of embarrassing defeats at the hands of Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, including a devastating
reversal at Kasserine Pass in mid-February 1943. Finally, Allen received
permission to reunite his division and was ordered to hold the line west of
Kasserine. Hold they did. On 23 February, Rommel sent two panzer divisions against
the thin line of Yanks, but the riflemen, anti-tank gunners, and artillerymen
of the Big Red One, along with American armor and air power, stopped them. The
Germans regrouped, returned, and were stopped again. Rommel called off the
assault and retreated to lick his wounds; Major General George S. Patton Jr.
wrote to his wife, "This has been a great day for the American Army. The 1st
Div stopped the famous 10th Panzer cold in two attacks." 21

In a 3 March 1943 letter to George C. Marshall,
Eisenhower expressed his confidence in the 1st Infantry Division's two leaders:
"Terry Allen seems to be doing a satisfactory job; so is Roosevelt." 22

Eisenhower knew he had a problem with II Corps
commanding general Lloyd Fredendall, who was disliked by almost everyone, both
above and below him. Upset with Fredendall's lack of aggressive spirit (and
especially his penchant for selecting poor subordinates), Eisenhower sacked him
in early March and replaced him with the fire-breathing Patton, a
fifty-seven-year-old officer notorious for his shocking obscenities, volcanic
temper, and demanding, Prussian-style approach to discipline. Believing that
slovenly troops were unlikely to be good fighters, Patton sought to bring about
a swift change in attitude with a proven method of behavior modification: Hit
'em in their pocketbooks. Patton established strict dress regulations and
swooped down on anyone caught violating them. Soldiers could ill afford the
loss of pay, so he steeply fined officers and enlisted men alike for breaches
of his dress code. Steel helmets and leggings were to be worn at all times, and
officers were required to wear ties — even in battle in the desert. It was
reported that Patton even flung open latrine-stall doors to see if soldiers had
their helmets on while relieving themselves. 23

Second Lieutenant Harold Monica, D Company, 18th
Infantry Regiment, was told that "any officer of II Corps apprehended by the
MPs [Military Police] without a neck tie would be fined $25.00. I heard a
couple tried it to see if he was serious and were picked up and promptly fined.
My tie may have been a little loose, but I had one on." 24

The harassment worked. Soon, the steel-helmeted,
legginged, and necktied soldiers hated and feared Patton more than they hated
and feared the Germans. As unpopular as Patton's methods were, the disgruntled
troops got the message and began shaping up. Besides looking like soldiers, they now began to perform like soldiers.

While the American soldiers in general cursed
Patton, Allen was worshipped by his 1st Division troops. Unlike the peacock
Patton, who always appeared spit-polished from his varnished helmet to his
gleaming cavalry boots, Allen was a soldier's general. He stayed with his
troops at the front, sharing their hardships. He was also reportedly the only
general who slept on the ground, rather than on a cot or a bed. He didn't care
that his clothes were wrinkled and his black hair tousled. What he most cared
about was making his men the finest soldiers they could be. Between battles,
there was very little slack time for the Big Red One; Allen always had some
sort of training program scheduled. Because he believed night attacks were safer
than daylight assaults, much time and effort was devoted to training the men in
how to move and fight in the dark.

It was natural, then, that Patton and Allen would
have their clashes. In one of the most celebrated, Patton, while visiting 1st
Division headquarters, asked about some narrow trenches outside the command
tents. Allen explained that they were for the men's protection from enemy air
attacks. To show his contempt for what he thought was cowardice on Allen's
part, Patton urinated into Allen's trench. "There — now try to use it," he
challenged. Allen's bodyguards audibly clicked off the safeties on their
Thompson submachine guns — a not-so-subtle hint that they did not appreciate
Patton's disrespectful act toward their commanding officer. Patton evidently
realized he had crossed the line and prudently departed the scene. 25

It was the middle of March and time for a new II
Corps offensive, one that Patton felt needed to be a resounding victory in
order to finally gain the respect of the British after the mediocre showing of
American troops under Fredendall. With Montgomery's Eighth Army engaging
Rommel's troops along the Mareth Line in southeast Tunisia, and Alexander's
First Army attacking Colonel-­General Jürgen von Arnim's Fifth Panzer Army
around Tunis, Patton would attack to the south at El Guettar with four
divisions: the 1st, 9th, and 34th Infantry and 1st Armored. Patton directed
elements of the 9th and 34th Divisions to make a feint toward Faid and Fondouk
while the 1st Armored Division headed for Kasserine and beyond. Allen's Big Red
One would capture Gafsa, an important road junction and railroad town, and
drive through enemy lines at El Guettar. 26

On 16 March, the II Corps units burst out of
eastern Algeria and began hunting for the enemy. The 1st Infantry Division
roared into Gafsa, only to discover it abandoned by the Italians. The offense
pushed on to El Guettar, twenty miles away. With the help of a Ranger
battalion, the 1st held the Kasserine Pass. The Germans were not about to let
this valuable piece of terrain go so easily. For the next three days, the 10th
Panzer Division hammered the Big Red One, overrunning some positions with its
tanks while the Luftwaffe strafed others with relentless air attacks. Yet,
Allen's men, supported by artillery and tank destroyers, held fast, refusing to
yield. Thirty-two panzers were knocked out and hundreds of infantrymen killed,
forcing the Germans to fall back. Eisenhower wrote glowingly to Marshall, "The
First Division continues to give a good account of itself." A new reputation
for the 1st Infantry Division had been forged. 27

The war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote, "For you at
home who think the African campaign was small stuff, let me tell you just this
one thing — the First Division did more fighting then than it did throughout all
of World War I." 28 Pyle also had a particular fondness for the Big Red One's
commander. He noted, "Major General Terry Allen was one of my favorite people.
Partly because he didn't give a damn for hell or high water; partly because he
was more colorful than most; and partly because he was the only general outside
the Air Forces I could call by his first name. If there was one thing in the
world Allen lived and breathed for, it was to fight. He had been all shot up in
the last war, and he seemed not the least averse to getting shot up again. This
was no intellectual war with him. He hated Germans and Italians like vermin . .
. ." 29 In April, Patton's II Corps, including the Big Red One, was shifted 150
miles to the north behind British lines and prepared for the last battle of the
North Africa campaign. But Patton would not be around to command the fight; on
15 April, he turned over the reins of II Corps to his deputy, Omar Bradley, and
departed for Casablanca to work on the plans for the next phase of the
Mediterranean campaign. 30

Under Bradley, the 1st and 34th Infantry Divisions,
although suffering heavy casualties, prevailed, killing or capturing hundreds
of the enemy. With the exhausted, depleted, and starving German and Italian
troops now boxed into a corner from which there was no escape, Allied artillery
batteries and aircraft pounded them unmercifully until they surrendered on 1
May. The battle for North Africa was over. 31

The 1st Division was pulled off the line and
trucked back to near Oran, where it recovered from six months of combat and
added reinforcements from the States. First Lieutenant Fred Hall of Hudson, New
Hampshire, the executive officer of E Company, 16th Infantry Regiment,
indicated that the division was not in a particularly jolly mood. "Since
arriving in Africa, we had been wearing woolen uniforms. The weather turned
hot. The base personnel at Oran were all dressed in summer khakis. We expected
to be issued the same uniforms; when we found out we were to continue wearing
woolens, it only heightened the resentment between combat soldiers and the
[rear-echelon] personnel. There wasn't a lot of recreation. We would go into
Oran for a couple of drinks and movies. The atmosphere in the city was
sometimes tense between the combat veterans and the service personnel." 32

Hall may have downplayed the situation. General
Bradley had a slightly different view: "While the Allies were parading
decorously through Tunis," he wrote, "Allen's brawling 1st Infantry Division
was celebrating the Tunisian victory in a manner all its own. In towns from
Tunisia all the way to Arzew, the division had left a trail of looted wine
shops and outraged mayors. But it was in Oran, the city those troops had
liberated on the [Operation] Torch
invasion, that the division really ran amuck. The trouble began when SOS
(Services of Supply) troops, long stationed in Oran, closed their clubs and
installations to our combat troops from the front. Irritated by this exclusion,
the 1st Division swarmed into town to 'liberate' it a second time." Eisenhower
ordered Bradley to get the rampaging 1st Division troops out of Oran. Bradley
believed that the 1st's behavior signaled "a serious breakdown in discipline
within the division. Allen's troops had now begun to strut their toughness
while ignoring regulations that applied to all other units. . . . Despite their
[prodigious] talents as combat leaders, neither Terry Allen nor Brigadier
General Theodore Roosevelt, the assistant division commander, possessed the
instincts of a good disciplinarian. They looked upon discipline as an unwelcome
crutch to be used by less able and personable commanders. Terry's own career as
an army rebel had long ago disproved the maxim that discipline makes the
soldier. Having broken the mold himself, he saw no need to apply it to his
troops. Had he been assigned a rock-jawed disciplinarian as assistant division
commander, Terry could probably have gotten away forever on the personal
leadership he showed his troops. But Roosevelt was too much like Terry Allen. A
brave, gamy, undersized man who trudged about the front with a walking stick,*
Roosevelt helped hold the division together by personal charm." 33

Many felt Bradley's criticism of Allen was unjust.
Some of it, no doubt, was the result of Bradley's hearing Walter Bedell Smith's
side of his brief, sarcastic run-in with Allen. Some of it, too, could be
attributed to Bradley's being a teetotaler and finding Allen's reputation as a
two-fisted drinker repugnant. And part of the problem was Allen's reputation as
a free spirit; while on maneuvers or in a class on tactics at Command and
General Staff School, Allen could never be counted on to come up with the
"book" answer; his creative mind had already puzzled out several unconventional
solutions. But while his personal appearance and manner often marked him as
"casual," beneath the rumpled exterior beat the heart of a fierce competitor.
An excellent horseman and polo player, Allen was an aggressive type who hated
to lose at anything. Some members of his division may have been slightly lax
when it came to military bearing, saluting, neatness, and close-order drill,
but it was wrong for anyone to regard them as "undisciplined." The men of the
1st Infantry Division were fighters, not choirboys, and woe be unto anyone — Allied or Axis — who challenged them or got in their way. 34

A year later, after the Normandy landings, war
correspondent and radio commentator Quentin Reynolds broadcast a tribute to
Terry Allen and his men. "Terry Allen used to like to fight [the Germans] at
night. We would ask General Allen why. And he gave us profound military
reasons, such as that the surprise would be greater. He could sneak artillery
up through the night. But when we really pressed him, Terry Allen would admit
that he liked to fight . . . at night because his casualties were fewer. The
1st Division had terrific casualties in Tunisia — about thirty percent. The boys
hoped that they'd be sent home for a rest. Most of them were Dodgers fans, and
they wanted to get home for the 1943 baseball season. At that time, the
division was composed chiefly of New York City, Long Island, Pennsylvania, and
a few New England men. But then the Sicilian invasion was being planned. Terry
Allen sent his men to Oran for a rest. They just about tore that city
apart — these kids had been in tough combat for so many months. Terry Allen said
to the MPs, 'My boys have had a tough time; let them enjoy themselves.' . . .
The 1st was proving itself to be a great division. The boys in the 1st Division
grumbled. They wanted to go home. . . . They grumbled and complained, and
little, hard-bitten General Terry Allen listened to them. And then he said,
with his eyes smiling: 'An army that won't complain, won't fight.'" 35

On 13 May 1943, the North Africa campaign was declared officially over. There was much rejoicing, and the Americans and
British were showered with flowers by grateful civilians from Tunis to Arzew.
But Tunis was a long way from Berlin, and between the two cities lay a hot,
rocky, volcanic island known as Sicily. There would be plenty of complaints
ahead.

About the time the Big Red One was fighting
for its life at El Guettar, back in England an unheralded appointment took
place. It was announced in no news­papers, was heard on no radio broadcasts.
Like much of what happened during wartime, the appointment of British
Lieutenant General Frederick E. Morgan to a secret post was closely guarded
information. By April 1943, he and a small staff had created COSSAC — Chief of
Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander — and to Morgan and the new organization
fell the daunting task of drawing up preliminary concepts for the invasion of
the European continent. Morgan cautioned his staff to avoid thinking of
themselves as planners of the
invasion; rather, they were the embryo of a future supreme headquarters — SHAEF,
the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force — that would coordinate
everything needed to put millions of men into France and, ultimately, into
Germany. 36

While the first rudimentary steps were being taken
to create what eventually would be known as Operation Overlord, the rest of the war against Hitler could not be allowed to wither on the vine. After the Allies had swept North Africa free of the Germans and their Italian partners, it was deemed critical to keep as many of
the enemy as possible bottled up in the Mediterranean, where they could not
bolster Nazi forces on the Eastern Front or be used to build even stronger
defensive fortifications along the French coast. To accomplish this, the
British and Americans would need to invade the island of Sicily.

This operation, known as Husky, was the largest amphibious operation up to that point in the
war, with 181,000 men, 3,200 ships, and 4,000 aircraft taking part. Eisenhower
was named overall commander of Husky,
just as he had been for Operation Torch.
Husky would be a combined Allied
operation, with four American divisions, under Generals Patton and Bradley, and
six British divisions, under General Bernard Law Montgomery, the hero of the
North African campaign, landing on the southeastern corner of the island. 37

In May, during the planning for Husky, Eisenhower told Patton that he
was considering sending Terry Allen back to the States for an eventual new job
as a corps commander, but Patton wanted Allen and the 1st Division. Despite
their often-stormy relationship, Patton had a genuine respect for Allen and the
division he led. While Bradley preferred to use the untested 36th Infantry
Division (Texas National Guard), Patton insisted on the Big Red One. "I want
those sons of bitches," he pleaded to Eisenhower. "I won't go on without them!"
He got them. 38

When one looks at a map of the Mediterranean, one
notices that there is an obvious stepping stone between Tunisia and Italy:
Sicily. When one reads a guidebook about Sicily, one learns that it is the
largest island in the Mediterranean, with an area of 9,926 square miles, or
25,708 square kilometers. One discovers that 85 percent of the land is hilly or
mountainous, with Mount Etna, an active volcano, its highest peak at 11,122
feet (3,390 meters). The capital, largest city, and chief seaport is Palermo,
on the northern coast. One learns that most of the Sicilians are very poor,
eking out a living through farming the overworked soil. The island is prone to
earthquakes, and a hot summer wind from North Africa, called the sirocco, leaves the riverbeds bone dry
and tempers frayed. One finds out that, owing to its strategic location, Sicily
has been invaded, occupied, and ruled by the ancient Greeks, Romans,
Carthaginians, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Germans,
French, Spanish, Austrians, and the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. One
discovers that the Siciliani have very strong family ties, that the people have
an ingrained distrust of foreigners and government, and that their code of
honor forbids them from reporting to the police crimes that they consider to be
private, family matters. One also learns that the Mafia is the de facto
government of Sicily. 39

What the guidebooks don't point out is that, in the
summer of 1943, the island was also home to some 365,000 heavily armed Italian
and German soldiers just waiting for the Americans and British to invade.

Operation Husky
began at dawn on 10 July 1943, in extremely rough surf along the southeastern
coast. Approaching in LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicles and Personnel), eight
infantry divisions prepared to disembark onto the beaches and rush inland.
Overhead, elements of the U.S. 82nd Airborne and British 1st Airborne Divisions
roared in, ready to drop behind enemy lines. Under the aegis of Patton's
Seventh Army and Omar Bradley's II Corps, the American assault divisions were
the 1st Infantry Division (with a Ranger battalion attached), the 3rd Infantry
Division, and the 45th Infantry Division (Colorado and Oklahoma National
Guard). The 2nd Armored Division was the "floating reserve" (to be brought in
when necessary, while the 9th Infantry Division would remain in North Africa
until needed). Five British infantry divisions, plus the airborne, made up
Montgomery's Eighth Army invasion force. 40

After surviving a jolting ride in the small landing
craft, the Big Red One hit the beaches near Gela. It was fortunate for the
invaders that the coastal defensive positions were manned by Italians. The
defenders, caught by surprise, put up only token resistance before either
surrendering or retreating. Lieutenant Leonard E. Jones, of C Company, 18th
Infantry Regiment, laughed: "Italians are the worst soldiers on the face of the
earth. They love to be captured." 41

The next day, the weak Italian defense gave way to
a determined German counterattack with tanks — headed directly for the 1st
Infantry Division's positions. Thirty panzers and fifty-five truckloads of
German infantrymen were spotted coming down the Gela-Niscemi road, attempting
to split the invasion force, with virtually nothing to stop them. In the
literal nick of time, the 16th Infantry Regiment's Cannon Company arrived and
blasted away at the enemy with its 105mm howitzers, knocking out dozens of
tanks and sending the enemy fleeing.

Next came the fight for the Ponte Olivo airport,
north of Gela. At midnight on 11 July, the 1st Infantry Division moved into the
attack and caught the German garrison before it could react; by noon, the
airfield was in American hands. The Germans continued for days to mount
counterattacks in the hope of throwing back the Big Red One but, no matter how
many panzers and truckloads of infantry the Germans employed, they could not
stop the Yanks — nor the British, who were also moving inland from their eastern
beachheads and overcoming opposition. After hard fighting, the 1st Division
moved northward through the mountainous center of the island. By 29 July,
despite heavy losses, Allen's men had managed to battle their way just to the
west of a town called Troina. 42

In the meantime, developments were taking place
behind the scenes that would have a major impact on the future conduct of the
war in Europe. On 19 July, the first Allied bombs fell on two major railroad
marshaling yards and an airbase in the city of Rome. This raid, preceded by the
Italian army's woeful performance in North Africa and Sicily, brought about a
crisis in Italy. Five days later, after the fall of Palermo, an anti-Mussolini
backlash erupted. A vote of no confidence by the Fascist state's Grand Council
shocked the dictator and he appealed to King Victor Emmanuel III for support;
even the king expressed his displeasure with Mussolini's conduct of the war and
the affairs of state. Stunned and humiliated, Mussolini had no choice but to
resign — and was promptly arrested. In his place, a caretaker government under
the aging, anti-Fascist Field Marshal Pietro Bodoglio was installed and
immediately proclaimed that the war, and Italy's role in it, would continue
(while simultaneously holding secret talks with the Allies that would lead to
Italy's capitulation). The Romans, who had once lustily cheered Mussolini,
marked the fall of the Fascist government with wild revelry. In Sicily, over
120,000 Italian troops celebrated the news by deserting or surrendering,
although some continued to fight alongside German units. Feeling he had been
stabbed in the back by Italy, Hitler ordered the evacuation from Sicily of as
many German units as possible. The steady withdrawal of German troops across
Sicily for the city of Messina — only a mile from the Italian mainland — turned
into a raging river of gray-uniformed humanity. 43

With the 1st and 9th Infantry Divisions sweeping
eastward through the center of the island, the 3rd and 45th Infantry Divisions
driving eastward along the northern coast, and the British rolling northward
along the eastern coast, the likelihood of a carbon copy of the Allies' victory
in Tunisia seemed very real. Once Troina fell, the 1st was promised a welcome
relief by Major General Manton S. Eddy's 9th Infantry Division.

Troina was built atop a ridge that dominated
Highway 120 and the surrounding barren countryside. Considered a natural
strongpoint, Troina and its environs are extremely steep, with little room for
an attacking force to maneuver. The battle did not go well from the start. For openers,
both II Corps and Division Intelligence had failed to detect the presence of
elements of four enemy divisions — all of them seasoned fighters, firmly
entrenched in strength in the town and surrounding mountains, and determined to
keep open the escape route to Messina. The 1st Infantry Division was exhausted
from three weeks of nearly continuous, uphill fighting in stifling heat. The
division was below strength, too, due to malaria and the heavy casualties
suffered since the landings.

The unsuspecting Americans, advancing from Cerami,
were a mile west of Troina when the Germans unleashed a storm of artillery
shells that brought the advance to a halt. Three days later, the 1st had
crawled only a few hundred yards, all the while taking a severe pounding from
German guns that not even aircraft could knock out. On 3 August, Allen launched
a night attack by the entire division which very nearly succeeded. The Germans
struck back with a fierce counterattack, however, and there the matter
stalemated. The fifth day of the battle, 4 August, began with an air and
artillery bombardment of German positions, but still the enemy refused to be
dislodged.43 So furious was the battle for Troina on 5 August that Private
James M. Reese of the 1st Division's 26th Infantry Regiment was awarded the
Medal of Honor, posthumously. Reese, a member of a mortar squad, kept up a
steady rate of fire against German attackers at nearby Monte Basilio until
enemy fire drove the squad from its position. Down to three rounds, Reese knocked
out a machine gun, then inflicted further casualties with a rifle before dying
in a fusillade of German fire. 45

The German defenders had done their job well,
having delayed the Americans for nearly a week to allow their units to escape
across the Strait of Messina — units that would live to fight another day in
Italy. Under cover of darkness on 5/6 August, the enemy began slipping quietly
out of Troina and the neighboring mountains. On the morning of 6 August,
Allen's men entered the shattered town to find the enemy gone. 46

The Big Red One had suffered greatly; some of its
rifle companies were down to sixty-five men from their authorized strength of
193. Troina also claimed two more casualties — Generals Allen and Roosevelt.
While the battle was still raging, a message that was not intended to reach
Allen until the battle was over was delivered to him: He and his assistant were
to be relieved of command. In the military, being relieved of command is
tantamount to being fired. And for the order to come down before a battle was
even concluded carried a strong odor of dissatisfaction about the performance
of the officers in question.

While the battle for Troina counted as an American
victory, Allen and Roose­velt could feel no satisfaction. Although Patton had
requested that Allen and Roosevelt be relieved, and Eisenhower (who had
personally seen that Allen was exhausted as far back as May) had approved the
request, it was Bradley, curiously, who took full responsibility for the
action. For his part, Allen later blamed Ike's chief of staff, Walter Bedell
Smith. 47

In his autobiography, Bradley expressed his belief
that the two-star general was too close to his men, who would fight like
Tasmanian Devils in combat but suffered from an exaggerated sense of
self-importance and a lack of personal and unit discipline. Bradley noted,
"Among the aggrieved champions of Terry Allen, and he had many, the relief was
condemned as completely unwarranted, and some of them mistakenly ascribed it to
a pique between Allen and Patton. There were no grounds for their suspicion. It
is probably true that Patton irritated Allen, but it was Patton who persuaded
Eisenhower to give him Allen for the Sicily invasion. Responsibility for the
relief of Terry Allen was mine and mine alone."

Bradley firmly believed that the 1st Division was
unable to subordinate itself to the corps mission and participate willingly as
part of a larger group: "The division had already been selected for the
Normandy campaign. If it was to fight well there at the side of inexperienced
divisions and under the command of an inexperienced corps, the division
desperately needed a change in its perspective." According to Bradley, "Under
Allen, the 1st Division had become increasingly temperamental, disdainful of
both regulations and senior commands. It thought itself exempted from the need
for discipline by virtue of its months on the line. And it believed itself to
be the only division carrying its fair share of the war."

Bradley saw Terry Allen as too much of an
individualist, and the division too full of pride and self-pity. Something had
to be done. "To save Allen both from himself and from his brilliant record, and
to save the division from the heady effects of too much success, I decided to
separate them. Only in this way could I hope to preserve the extraordinary
value of that division's experience in the Mediterranean war, an experience
that would be of incalculable value in the Normandy attack."

Bradley knew that relieving Allen of command,
especially after the difficult battle for Troina, would be seen by some as a
punishment for failing to take the town quickly, but so be it. He could not
replace Allen with Roosevelt, either, for, if anything, Roosevelt was even more
popular than Allen and governed with a gentler hand. And he couldn't very well
allow Roosevelt to stay on as assistant division commander because, "any
successor of Allen's would find himself in an untenable spot unless I allowed
him to pick his own assistant commander. Roosevelt had to go with Allen for he,
too, had sinned by loving the division too much."*48

Although failing to acknowledge Bradley's role in
the "firing," an officer on Eisenhower's staff noted in his diary on 2 August,
"Major General Terry Allen, commander of the 1st Division, and Brigadier
General Theodore Roosevelt, his assistant, had been relieved by Patton, the
decision confirmed by Ike. The former for 'war weariness,' and to be returned
to America, without discredit, under our rotation policy. There he could rest
and take another division, as he's an excellent commander. His men love him. .
. . General Roosevelt had proved to be a gallant leader of inexperienced
troops. He is battle-wise and extremely courageous. Likewise, he had 'had it.'
Ike thought eventually his good qualities could be used by later assigning him
to an inexperienced division about to go into battle. . . . The 1st Division
has been in more fighting than any other outfit in this operation, and General
Allen simply became fatigued to such a low ebb that he was unable to afford the
inspiration and the leadership, as well as the imagination and discipline, that
are necessary for a divisional commander." 49

On 7 August 1943, the day after he was officially
relieved of command, Allen wrote a farewell message to his men: "To all members
of the 'Fighting First:' In compliance with recent orders, Major General
Clarence Huebner, who fought in this division with great distinction during the
last war, has been designated as Division Commander. I feel most fortunate to
have been your commander during the proceding [sic] year. You should be proud
of your combat records. . . . You have lived up to your battle slogan, 'Nothing
in hell must stop the First Division.'"

Allen then received the Distinguished Service Medal
and departed for the States.* He apparently bore no bitterness toward Patton.
In fact, in a 14 August letter to his wife, Mary Frances, he noted, "My change
of assignment orders were a great surprise. . . . Patton was most kind and
cordial and thoroughly appreciative of what the division had done. Said the
division had carried the weight of the attack in Sicily." 50

Omar Bradley had already selected a new commander
for the Big Red One, a general who was Allen's polar opposite. "As Allen's
successor in the 1st Division," Bradley noted, "we picked Major General
Clarence R. Huebner, known to the army as a flinty disciplinarian. Huebner had
enlisted in the army as a private in 1910 and was commissioned before World War
I. He was no stranger to the 1st Division, for he had already worn its patch in
every rank from a private to colonel. In returning to command the division,
however, he had come from a desk in the Pentagon,* an assignment which did not
tend to ease his succession to Allen's post. On the second day after he assumed
command there in the hills of Troina, Huebner ordered a spit-and-polish cleanup
of the division. He then organized a rigid training program which included
close-order drill.

"'Keerist —' the combat veterans exclaimed in undisguised disgust, 'here they send us a stateside Johnny to teach us how to march through the hills where we've been killing Krauts. How stupid can this sonuvabitch get?'" 51

Although Clarence Huebner's resumé was impressive,
everyone wondered — did he have what it would take to replace the beloved Terry
Allen and turn the exhausted, self-pitying 1st Infantry Division into the
hardened steel needed to crack Hitler's Fortress Europe?